biblical-transliteration 0.1.0

Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek transliteration in three schemes (SBL, Simple, Phonetic).

biblical-transliteration

Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek transliteration in three schemes — academic (SBL), simple ASCII, and phonetic. Pure Python, no dependencies.

from biblical_transliteration import (
    HebrewTransliterator, HebrewScheme, HebrewOptions,
    GreekTransliterator, GreekScheme, GreekOptions,
)

heb = HebrewTransliterator(HebrewOptions(scheme=HebrewScheme.SBL))
heb.transliterate("בְּרֵאשִׁית")
# 'bǝrēʾšîṯ'

grk = GreekTransliterator(GreekOptions(scheme=GreekScheme.SBL))
grk.transliterate("Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος")
# 'En archē ēn ho logos'

Install

pip install biblical-transliteration

Requires Python 3.10+. Zero runtime dependencies.

Schemes

Each transliterator supports three output styles via TransliterationScheme:

Scheme	Hebrew (שָׁלוֹם)	Greek (λόγος)	Use when
SBL	šālôm	logos	Academic writing, scholarly publications, lexicon entries. Full SBL Handbook of Style diacritics.
SIMPLE	shalom	logos	Reader-friendly Latin, no diacritics. Good for UI labels and casual contexts.
PHONETIC	sha-LOM	LO-gos	Pronunciation cues with syllable boundaries and stress (capitalized syllable). For learners and audio-aligned uses.

What this handles

Hebrew (~1,000 lines of rules):

• Full nikkud (vowel point) coverage, including hataf vowels
• BeGaD KeFaT spirantization with proper SBL macron-under marks (ḇ ḡ ḏ ḵ p̄ ṯ)
• Vocal vs silent shewa distinction
• Qamats qatan (o) vs qamats gadol (a) detection
• Dagesh forte vs lene
• Shin/sin dot disambiguation
• Final letter forms (ך ם ן ף ץ)
• Optional cantillation marks
• Maqaf, meteg, sof pasuq

Koine Greek (~800 lines of rules):

• Diphthongs in canonical order (αι, ει, οι, υι, αυ, ευ, ηυ, ου)
• Breathing marks read off either vowel of a diphthong
• Iota subscript (η̄ in SBL, dropped elsewhere)
• Final sigma (ς)
• Koine-correct phonemes — β = b (not modern v), φ = ph (not modern f), υ = u in diphthongs
• Eta/omega macron distinction in SBL
• Accents and breathing marks normalized

Why three schemes?

Open-source transliterators tend to pick one and stick with it, which forces you to choose between accuracy (SBL is hard to read for non-specialists) and readability (loose ASCII loses important phonemic distinctions). Three schemes lets you produce SBL-compliant output for academic work, ASCII for UI labels, and pronunciation cues for learners — from the same source text.

Why a separate Hebrew + Greek package?

Most existing PyPI packages are language-specific and use inconsistent APIs. This package presents a single mental model — Transliterator(Options(scheme=...)) — that works identically across both languages, so consumer code that transliterates whatever script it encounters stays clean.

Comparison with related packages

This package fills a specific gap in the Python biblical-NLP ecosystem. Other tools cover adjacent problems well; here's what they do differently so you can pick the right one:

Package	Scope	Notes
biblical-transliteration (this)	Hebrew + Koine Greek, three schemes (SBL/Simple/Phonetic)	Designed for biblical use specifically. Koine-correct phonemes for Greek; full nikkud + begadkefat + qamats qatan handling for Hebrew. Single consistent API across both languages.
transliterate	9 languages including (Modern/Classical) Greek; no Hebrew	Excellent general-purpose romanizer for European/Caucasian scripts. Greek pack is calibrated for Modern Greek phonology, not Koine — β→v, φ→f, eta and epsilon collapsed. Use this if you need Russian/Armenian/Georgian/Bulgarian etc. alongside Greek.
beta-code	Greek only	Solves a different problem: BETA encoding ↔ Greek Unicode (e.g. mh=nin ↔ μῆνιν). Pair it with this package when working with CCAT/TLG sources — first beta→Unicode with beta-code, then Unicode→Latin with this.
Hebrew transliteration on PyPI	—	As of 2026, there is no actively maintained Biblical Hebrew transliterator on PyPI. This package fills that gap.

If your workflow needs SBL Handbook of Style-compliant academic transliteration with proper diacritics for both Hebrew (bǝrēʾšîṯ, šālôm) and Greek (logos, Iēsous), this package is the only option in the Python ecosystem at the time of writing.

Limitations

• Hebrew text must be Unicode (with or without nikkud). Beta-coded Hebrew (CCAT/Michigan-Claremont format) is not handled by this library — use a beta→Unicode converter first.
• Greek text is assumed Koine. Modern Greek and Classical Greek work with the SBL and SIMPLE schemes, but PHONETIC is calibrated for Koine and may not match what you expect for Classical or Modern texts.
• Qamats qatan detection is rule-based, not perfect. Texts with explicit U+05C7 marking (modern WLC) work reliably; older texts using the ambiguous U+05B8 may occasionally guess wrong.

Examples

from biblical_transliteration import HebrewTransliterator, HebrewOptions, HebrewScheme

# All three schemes for the same word
word = "שָׁלוֹם"
for scheme in HebrewScheme:
    t = HebrewTransliterator(HebrewOptions(scheme=scheme))
    print(f"{scheme.value:10} {t.transliterate(word)}")
# sbl        šālôm
# simple     shalom
# phonetic   sha-LOM

from biblical_transliteration import GreekTransliterator, GreekOptions, GreekScheme

# John 1:1
text = "Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος."
for scheme in GreekScheme:
    t = GreekTransliterator(GreekOptions(scheme=scheme))
    print(f"{scheme.value:10} {t.transliterate(text)}")

Development

git clone https://github.com/curran-gehring/biblical-transliteration.git
cd biblical-transliteration
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate     # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Acknowledgments

Transliteration rules were developed against the Society of Biblical Literature Handbook of Style (2nd ed., 2014) and validated against verses from the CATSS parallel corpus.